For todays featured poem, we have gone with another piece from Joan McNerney. Seemingly a comment upon subjects such as aging, a creeping sense of mortality, and also the end of love, and indeed a reflection upon ones situation and circumstance within the situations we find ourselves. A tragic, reflective and confessional piece, “Eleventh Hour” brings to mind the works of Plath, and is another great addition to our archives.

Like this:

When you were wrenched
from me by Death,
the unceasing rain drenched
my very being;
the nights of winds wild,
unsettled my soul.
No longer a child,
your heart left a whole.
Dreams half formed and turbid,
barbed and bound with
memories coherent and vivid,
reliving the dying embers of life,
orphaned words held hostage
to overwhelming inadequacies.
Reviling flames of rage,
and the significance of
the underlying situation;
a futile recreation.

Todays featured poem from Alex is a tale of tragedy. Shot through with imagery of sadness, death, depression and the elemental force of nature, Alex weaves a story of heartbreak and loss. A clever use of alliteration courses through this, piece, and the imagery invoked tell of the emotional storm of the subjects loss. A worthy piece, deserving of several reads to delve into the meanings within.

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Like this:

We love roller girl
in her tatted fishnets
and red satin shorts
We love roller girl
when she’s jamming
her thighs drum taut
her fists pumping and driving

We love roller girl
when pushed to the edge
of our seats and her shoulders
are the condor’s, hunched and muscled
then smooth as sails the instant before
she takes that whip from the wall

We love roller girl
in that electrifying flight
And after the jams we shoulder and shove
hoping for a swatch of her sweaty jersey
or a flourish from her pen on our program

“We love you roller girl!” we shout as she waves
kisses and winks and peace outs
declining invitations to beers.
We love roller girl, we say, still exhilarated
and swept away with the crowd
and the blockers

We love her, and we toast the win
as we replay her plays that led us to victory
but we don’t see her heave her quads
over her shoulder and pivot on threaded sneakers
to a place we don’t

love her. On the other side
of Orchard Street, past McDonnell’s Hots
under the iron railroad trestle
to a playground overgrown with candy wrappers
and broken swings. She settles
on the stair side of the slide
where Gena once loved Tony
with a pocket knife.

She sticks an unlit nickel cigar in the side
of her mouth, opens
a copy of Boo Hoo Bird on her knees
and waits for a different show
that begins at ten o’clock
in a house nestled back
in a conspiracy of pine.

The picture window lights
and the young man’s t-shirt is always
white and rippling around his hips
while the toddler he shoulders
plays bongos with pudgy hands on his head.
He grabs the remote and points
and the two of them are dappled
in carousel dreams.

She sits forward then, holding her breath
like a thumb on the pause button.
Her torn hands flatten across the open book
as father and son sit on the couch
and he snuggles the toddler in his lap,
a kanga and his roo.
And when he tenders the fine toddler hair
with his lips, her lips tighten and she squeezes
Boo Hoo Bird to her
someday

until he switches the TV off
and then the light
and then the light
inside her

We love roller girl
under the bright white lights
when her hips roll the bank
her lips set like a warrior’s
and she soars like the condor.
So, she made a mistake.
At the morning meeting she’ll have coffee
before she punches in at the hardware store
where he never needs a bolt or a screw
brandishing the stroller past

A veritable roller-coaster of emotions, Stanley Anne Zane Latham’s poem “Roller Girl” peels back the veneer of success and adulation to reveal broken pieces of a life filled with agony, loss and despair. A poignant, deep and multi-layered story which starts with a heady mix of emotion and words, and steadily starts to break down both symbolically and semantically, until all we are left with is a kind of emptiness, and a view of a cracked soul through a broken piece of glass.

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Like this:

Emptiness.
Emptiness filled inside.
Filled with emptiness.
No.
Not total emptiness.
A silent scream.
A scream of silence to fill the void.
Consuming the emptiness with silence.
A scream of all and none.
Ripping through the void of mind.
The emptiness now full of silence.
Silence straining and forcing.
Silence break through the empty.
Through the empty and into the all.
Hungry, voracious.
Snarling, snapping, screaming, howling silence.
A silence full of voices screaming empty
Silence.
Empty.
Void.

A comment on the subject of depression and loneliness, todays featured poem comes from David Cox. Starting from nothing, from emptiness, this piece builds to a stifling, suffocating crescendo, before falling back away into nothingness at the end, peering over the edge into the void but not quite falling over it. A dark tableaux of words and emotion gathered from the recesses of the mind and stitched together, this is a deeply personal and introspective piece which shows to us the private musings of the poet who has been left outside the world.

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Todays poem is the second of Eric Nolan’s “Three Dreamers”, three tales of people who work together, but are oblivious to each others darkness, as they are so utterly absorbed in their own. Today we meet the Secretary, who has her own unique darkness, and in her dreams she can never escape it, it’s mechanical nature pulling her in whenever she goes to sleep.

Yesterday, we dealt with the writer, who had his own darkness to deal with, which came in the form of birds taunting his very soul. Tomorrow, we will meet the Bureaucrat. Stay tuned for his arrival.

Eric is a writer out of Ridge, NY who we are very proud to feature on this site. Leave your thoughts below on this piece, and share it with the world.

Tangled webs,
My soul hurts,
I think I’d rather never have loved, than loved & lost instead,
See, I’m depressed,
I walk through Central Station giving pennies to the ‘Walking Dead’,
I know that time flies,
Like that toy plane we built up & let fly from the high rise,
Mean guys are just the average,
Prepared to savagely damage anything remotely romantic,
I didn’t think I was one… You disagreed,
The break up was a long one… I doubt that you’ll be missing me,

Tangled Webs,
My soul hurts,
Sometimes I wish I’d never have loved, than loved & lost instead,
Secrets & lies,
I tried to stop the demise, of what began when I saw you cry,
Now that’s all there seems to be,
Raised voices or petty squabbles, just sitting in front of the TV,
No drink or drug binging,
Hanging out in clubs hinging, on drunk women
Ambition & passion has been,
Missing & lacking,
But the vision of you packing up your bags is distracting,

Tangled webs,
My soul hurts,
Mum’s wrong, I wish I’d never have loved than loved & lost instead,
See, green grass grows & weeds die,
You go from strength to strength; I’m straight from lie to lie,
I try to cry,
Can’t execute the liquid from my ducts I think I’m dead inside,
Our wires criss-crossed,
People look and say his loss, but this was,
A Tangled web with only one fly that gets caught,
So swallow me up & immerse me in guilt,
It’s worse to have lost love ‘cos you know how heartbreak felt.